The Oil and Gas Industry Fights Biden In Court

February 26, 2021

The oil and gas industry is still recovering from the disruption to the market caused by the pandemic that led to the sharp decline in oil demand. Now, with the Biden administration continuing to dish more blows, the industry is forced to fight back for the survival of our domestic oil and gas industry.

Oil Price reports:

One recently announced fight involves Continental Resources, an Oklahoma-based exploration and production company that relies on permits to allow it to conduct its normal business. But in January, on the day President Biden was inaugurated, the Department of the Interior clamped down–on President Biden’s direction–on approving permits for oil and gas exploration on federal lands and in federal waters. It did this not by banning permits outright but by limiting which Interior employees could approve permits. The number of employees to approve permits has dwindled significantly to a total of nine, limited to “leadership” only. It is an effective suspension of the permitting process, although not an outright suspension. 

The suspension order, signed January 20, was to last for a period of sixty days–until March 21.

Continental filed a lawsuit in a U.S. District Court in North Dakota against the Department of Interior’s unconstitutional actions calling on The Mineral Leasing Act, which tells the DOI how much time they have to rule on permit applications. This suspension has delayed 50 of Continental’s permits and is clearly being used to stall the permitting process.

We previously called out Biden’s appointees to DOI in a blog post and the role they would play in his green agenda, “President Biden’s political appointees at Interior will no doubt do everything they can to ensure that the processes for issuing permits to drill and conduct hydraulic fracturing will be drastically slowed down.”

Continental isn’t alone in taking action against the administration overreach, the Western Energy Alliance also filed a lawsuit challenging his executive order that banned oil and gas leasing on federal public lands.

The WEA filed their suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Wyoming–a state that ranks first in federal natural gas production and third in oil. Wyoming also has more federal acres leased than any other state. 

We hope the state courts these lawsuits have been filed in will bring some order to the top-down approach this administration has taken on the oil and gas industry. Energy-rich communities across the country are dependent on the industry for their livelihoods and revenue for their local economies. Liberal elites in Washington depleting those budgets and taking away thousands of American energy worker jobs is not reflective of the interests of the American people.